Orange Wins! + Manufacturing Prototype Photos

Without further ado, I'd like to present the Voter's Choice color....Orange! It won with almost 2000 out of more than 10,000 qualified votes.

I think it looks pretty snazzy! The exact color appearance may vary from this rendering as we work with our plastics supplier. And if you don't like orange, don't worry! As a color backer, you're entitled to pick any of the (now) 4 color options for each one of your Pebbles: Black, White, Red or Orange. We will send out a survey to request your selection later on in the project.

Manufacturing Update

The Pebble team has been bouncing back and forth between Palo Alto and Taipei a lot over the last 6 weeks. The factory that we selected has an R&D facility in Taipei while their main manufacturing and assembly locations are in China. Andrew, Steve and I have all travelled separately to Taipei to oversee the transition between the design and manufacturing stages of the project. In terms of our schedule, we're sticking pretty closely to an aggressive timetable we put together at the end of May (remember our first timetable was created before we launched on Kickstarter, when we were expecting to manufacture just 1,000 Pebbles). While we won't be able to start shipping Pebbles in September, our current schedule has us on track to go from manufacturing zero to 15,000 Pebbles per week as soon as possible.

Eric checking the power consumption of Pebble's backlight module

We're currently in a phase called Engineering Verification. During this phase, the factory produced samples of the entire product. We're currently evaluating each individual component (case, lens, circuit board, charge cable, etc) and we'll tweak the design as necessary. The design needs to be nearly perfect before we move into a phase called 'tooling' during which the factory creates hardened steel tools for injection molding Pebble's plastic components.

Comments

I will be the first to admit,I'm an impatient guy when it comes to buying something. But its been 2 weeks since the last update. Please keep me at bay and release another update so I know there is some progress as to what is going on?

I know how difficult the manufacturing process can be. Can you update all of us backers on when you think they'll be here? I think updates every 2 weeks would be a good idea. My only concern is that I get my 2 watches before Christmas, as they are presents.

more delay from you guys, similar watches will start its sales in the market soon, not a good market strategy!
In the end it will come to who prefers the design of the watch itself and not its functionality.

To people complaining about Orange, you picked an option that provided three known color choices and an unknown 4th choice. You should have been smart enough to consider the possibility that you wouldn't get the unknown 4th color that you wanted, and so you should have planned to want one of the other colors.
I was planning for the White or Red one, so I'm perfectly fine not getting Orange.

"Dear pebble developers, please post what "a soon as possible" means and if you don't know it, then post that. No one will - ok, a few YouTube-like posters perhaps will, but these kind is found in every commentary system - will rip your head of. We all want a high-quality pebble and most of us are ready to wait for it."

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As soon as possible means exactly what it says: as soon as possible. It's another way of saying they don't know.

Donating, investing, buying ... whatever you call it: the developers of this watch have to accept the fact that a lot of their backers - that are in fact paying them - have seen the September delivery date (and still see it right now) on this site. Sure there's a "Est" put before it, but IMHO it is not completely impossible that a lot of the backers are fraking awfully looking forward to get their hands on the pebble watch. So I as an investor, buyer, donator or whatever you may call me I can IMHO expect that a delay in delivery is clearly displayed in an project update headline and not mentioned by the way in line 99whatever. This would be a sign of trust and good Information policy, especially for all of the few people here (like me, as you may have guessed) who do not understand the problems of blowing a production line from 1000 to 85000 - I personally would call this latter fact "success" and not "problem".
Dear pebble developers, please post what "a soon as possible" means and if you don't know it, then post that. No one will - ok, a few YouTube-like posters perhaps will, but these kind is found in every commentary system - will rip your head of. We all want a high-quality pebble and most of us are ready to wait for it.

@Craig, as @seth exaplined, we aren't donating money, and we are not investing in a company, we are buying a product in green. We trusted in Eric Migicovsky, but that doesn't mean we are supposed to not ask forfully satisfaction of the advertisements

@Craig I guess I'll have a little bit of a tax write off for donating to pebble. ;) kickstarter is more of a support system. not a charity. if you give money for charity to cancer research you don't expect that money to cure your cancer. However i do expect to have a watch on my wrist. Kickstarter is a good way to find out if your product is viable. That worked great for pebble. But pebble is a business not a charity. I made an investment for a watch. I want it to be as awesome as I hope and is advertised. don't get me wrong I think pebble is doing a great job here. but to say that I made a donation is nonsense, and an insult to real philanthropists. I gave money to pebble for mostly selfish reasons.

Rather than defend projects that are late maybe people should listen to the complaints and maybe in the future adjust their shipping schedules as appropriate with some larger buffers. I've seen many projects with long delays and always people defending kick starter delays like its a personal attack. It's the minority who are the apologists and in the end if enough projects blow well past their original projected dates people will be wary of supporting campaigns in the future. Kickstarter will only survive if the projects don't wind up so incredibly late.

I think the problem is that with this many backers you're going to get a lot of people who just don't understand the concept of Kickstarter, and that it is a risk. I have no doubts about Pebbles ability to deliver, but generally all Kickstarter projects are an investments, and not all investments pay off.

If you want to buy a product, go to Amazon. If you want to support entrepreneurs and developers, go to Kickstarter. If you believe that every project will pan out, then you're in the wrong place. I've backed four projects now, none of which have shipped and all of which are behind. That's fine. This is not BestBuy. Part of what you're doing is helping, in a small way, to bring projects to market. It's a complicated process. But consider this: you're in a better place than the VCs who backed Digg, which was "valued" at $60 bazillion and sold for $500k. In other words, products or services that are in development don't always pan out, or aren't always worth what people say they're worth.

Yes, I'd be disappointed if I didn't get my Pebble. Or if I got it in 2013. No doubt. But life goes on, and $150 is hardly a significant sum of money to risk for, frankly, my belief that I'm helping a bunch of smart, young guys build a company and develop skills that will generate great products down the line.

If $150 is too much for you to risk for a product that comes late or a product that doesn't meet your excitement level or a product that is, god forbid, in a color you don't like, you shouldn't be on Kickstarter in the first place.

Having been part if the I'm Watch fiasco as a consumer, I want to say how much I appreciate timely and honest updates. People purchased the I'm Watch for at the very least, three times more than the Pebble. Some of the original purchasers have been waiting 18 months or longer. For months and months, we couldn't even contact anyone. They still have enough of my money to buy two more Pebbles, but that money will never return to me. Given the fact that you guys have gone from, "OOO, that sounds like a good idea to where we are now, you are entering unexplored waters. i would say the large majority of purchasers will be willing to wait. Now, if January rolls around, and no one receives them yet, that would be a different story, and I would consider getting a wrist sundial, right after I slit the other wrist. God Bless!

I'm actually surprised that it's taken Eric and the guys this long to announce that they wouldn't be able to make the September delivery window. They've clearly been working their arses off to get through the final stages before manufacturing begins, in line I'm sure, with the timetable for ramping up that they devised at the start of the project when they were only anticipated having to make 1000 or so units.
For the butthurt amongst you (especially Simon Roberts) if you seriously believe that they can magically increase their production rate by 85 times, no matter what kind of economies of scale may be present, and still hit the original estimate then I've got some magic beans you might like,
And yes, Simon, I'm fully aware that these are the guys behind the IMPulse watch for BlackBerries. That's what gave them the skills to design and develop the Pebble and it's the reason why I trusted them enough to put my money into this project. But the IMPulse only sold a few thousand units during the year or so that it's been available (did you not find that out with all the Googling you've been doing?) which is what gave the Pebble team the experience to estimate a timeframe for finalising the design and manufacturing based on the expectation of selling a similar number of Pebbles. No-one could have anticipated the kind of success that's happened here and it's far better that the team are working to get the manufacturing up to speed to produce 85,000 watches as quickly as possible for all the backers rather then plodding along with their original timescale and estimated numbers, leaving backers swinging in the wind for much longer waiting for their turn to get a watch.
You've pledged to back a project in development for which your reward is one or more of the end products before they become commercially available. You haven't placed a pre-order for the next Call Of Duty game on Amazon with a guaranteed shipping date.
Now totter off back to your corner and have a Coke and a smile.

PS Yes, I hate orange too. Looks like I'll be getting a black one for me and red for my wife. Although it would be a really nice (but unnecessary) gesture by Eric and the team if they decided to take some of that fat Kickstarter cash and the extra time of this delay to add in the second place colour from the voters' choice as a bonus for us patient colour backers.

The delivery date slippage is no big deal, this is a new product goodness sake. It's good news that the problem is volume, not a n engineering one. I've back other projects and this doesn't surprise me.

On the color... I have to say that I find Orange disappointing as it seems too similar to Red in a 'bright' color way. I was hoping for more of a 'muted' green or blue color. That said, I'm glad to have had input into the 4th color and a choice.

having spent 10 years in the survey industry, I just want to say that 2k out of 10k is not a huge 'win'.
there was likely a better question type (way of asking the question) that would have allowed people to choose preferences of one against another, which would have likely resulted in more satisfied people.
(for example, even though 20% of the people may have wanted orange as their primary color, it could well be that 60% would have agreed on a secondary choice. so that their overall satisfaction would be 60%, where orange might be the primary choice of 20%, it might only be the third or fourth choice for the other 80%.
just sayin, there's a science behind how to please the most # of people, and it's not a straight 'pick one' question type.
having said that, I didn't buy the option to vote, I'm just surprised by orange.
but I thought I'd spread the word about better survey choices that scientifically are made to please the most # of people, as opposed to the "largest minority". 20% win would call for a re-election in any country, county, or club.